2014 Sema project

We've been working on a build for Sema this coming fall, we feel were far enough along to at least post some progress. Fair warning there will be a lot of pictures since thats what everyone wants to see anyway.

We started off by getting a rendering for the truck from KEG, many of the sponsors on the rendering are just there. The two main players that are helping along this project are Trevor at Precision Metal Fabrication who is handling the lift and Josh at The Diesel Cartel.



I ordered in a 2014 Ruby Red Platinum and picked it up with only a few miles on the odometer, made sure they didn't wash it or anything like that. I literally drove it home, washed it, and drove it down to work to start the build. We started with 37 miles on the truck, about as new as it gets.

So what's the plans?

Next we built some killer jack stands for the frame to sit on, yes they were painted to match the truck, :badidea:. Basically built them from scratch and welded them up. We wanted to get a good idea how the ruby red would lay and spent some time matching it to the truck. A heavy red metallic isn't exactly easy to match up. I agree that this was a little uncalled for but who is to say otherwise? I'll get on with the actual build and some of the details hopefully tomorrow, I felt these were too cool to leave out.

I knew after seeing the PMF build at Sema last year that I wanted to get a lift made by Trevor. We are going to be running a 12'' ride height airlift that should top out around 16'' of lift. Although the lift is still in progress and a lot of the design is evolving some of the highlights are as follows:

12'' ride height
Rear triangulated link system (looses the traditional track bar)
Rear axle diff cover incorporated into lower triangulated mount
Rear axle truss
Subframe to capture upper link mounts
Custom aluminum fuel cell in spare tire carrier (made by PMF)
Front diff cover with PSC ram assist mount
Indexed transfer case with new trans crossmember
King 3.0 shocks
Accuair air control system

Trevor is doing a ton of design work to make this lift the best it can be, I'm doing my best to stay patient as I know this lift will be one of the best airlifts ever made. The frame is also being stripped of all OE mounts minus the body mounts, all shock mounts lower and upper are also coming out. Once the lift is installed we will be spraying the frame to match the truck. It should looks really nice against the lift.

Note: I will post more build details as the days go by.

This should turn out real nice!

way cool man !! wish I had something to go on that sucker !!

bigrpowr said:

way cool man !! wish I had something to go on that sucker !!

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Thank you, looking to do some work under the hood also but not at all sure what route I am going. Not going to go crazy just looking to bolt some more air and fuel on to get some respectable power.

Gonna be a sick build!

Nice, can't wait to see the progress


Sent from my fortress of awesome

Very cool!

sent from my little slice of heaven (the bathroom)

Its gonna be a sweet truck for sure

Thanks for the comments, I'll post some pictures of the actual tear down this evening.

love that truck....rendering looks great as well.

It was onto the tear down, stripping it down to the frame is a time consuming job to say the least. With everything be so new it makes it a lot easier but it also made me work with more caution. For the mess of hardware these trucks come with it came apart easier than expected. We decided that stripping down to the frame and painting it was by far the most proper way to go. The coils buckets, radius arm mounts, shackle mounts, rear shock mounts, etc all had to come off so the tear down started.

First thing, we pulled off the box, pretty easy work with the right equipment.





The real easy stuff like the grille and headlamps came out next to aid in the process of removing the cab. The plumbing is pretty crazy in these 6.7's with two separate cooling systems and what not. After fighting a few hard to reach spring clamps we got all the hoses and electrical connections disconnected. Had to pull the cac, master cylinder and tie a lot of stuff up to the motor.



Off the cab came,




Beast of a fan,


Not much fun to be had removing the downpipe with the cab on,

Nice! Gonna be a sweet truck!

sent from my little slice of heaven (the bathroom)

With a decent start on the tear down I started getting the parts situation started. The truck will be covered in Rigid lighting of some sort, plan on running some rds bars, e2's, d2's, q2's, sr2's and a healthy amount of A series underneath. Definitely not lacking in the lighting department, the norm like horns, fass, viair, flopro, afe and a lot of other parts were all sourced from Josh@thedieselcartel. Real glad were working together on this build, the service and knowledge at The Diesel Cartel is unbeatable.



These Q2's are no joke, can't wait to get those in my fog lamp pockets, Josh got me setup with the Rigid mounts also. Should make for a sturdy setup,





Bentley@H&S Performance also hooked us up with a start to the performance side of the build,

beautiful truck

please don't perpetuate the top side light bar trend! LOL

One last one for now, since were not to the point of posting any shiny stuff of our own I'll post up a few things we did for Project Gold Digger made by The Diesel Cartel. We sprayed up an oil pan and filter for The Diesel Cartel, the gold is so nice in person. Also got the vinyl matched to the Sterling Gray exterior paint on the truck, the metallic in the vinyl was pretty mint against the heavy gold metallic. Of course the job couldn't have been completed without a little body filler,



That metallic tho,

drunk on diesel said:

beautiful truck

please don't perpetuate the top side light bar trend! LOL

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We'll I am for the show at least, thats why I got cab lights incase they no longer do it for me. I'm just running an add mount that were going to modify to hold to curved rigids. I hear you on the overuse of light bars up top but the curved bars flow a lot better with the windshield. The plan is to paint the bars ruby red but we'll see how that goes when we get to it.

that thing is SICK